Archaic Points of View?

I was poking around the various bookshelves in my house recently, trying to find something I'd not read before (or at least not in a while), when I found a Robin Cook novel that came with my wife. (A bookreading spouse is a definite plus in my opinion, and one who doesn't mind when I attempt to be funny is even better!)

The book, Godplayer, was not one I was familiar with, but within 35-40 pages, I had a fairly good idea what was going on and who the probable bad guy was (turns out I was wrong, which is a good thing.) But what I'm writing about today isn't about whether a story is predictable or not. Rather, I'm speaking to the passage of time.

A long time ago, in a readership far, far different from what we see now, it appears that commercial fiction allowed things to happen that are frowned upon by we sophisticated 21st century readers. Two points in particular caught my attention: dialogue tags and shifting points of view. First a couple of definitions for those Bookshelf readers who might not be familiar with the jargon of writers.

A dialogue tag is the stream of "he said, she saids" that sometimes accompany dialogue. It can also include those annoying Tom Swifties. For example, "I won't wear the snow plow," Thomas tooted haughtily. The adverbial descriptor is not only unnecessary, it distracts the reader from the story.

Elmore Leonard is a proponent of using "said" almost exclusively. But Leonard also doesn't add words that needn't be added. The following would probably piss Elmore off:

"I shot him," she said.
"But why?" Crispy asked.
"Because I couldn't stand the idea of him leaving me," she replied.
"But he wasn't leaving you. He was breaking up with her. He told me so himself," Crispy said.
"Oh no! What have I done?" she sighed.

Ok, aside from it being terrible dialogue, I think you'll understand what I mean. This conversation takes place between two people, so we don't need to identify who is speaking each and every time. Context means something.

The other thing I wanted to address was point of view shifts. Perhaps this helps:

Without turning on the light, Sandy threw her coat on the bed. She missed Derrick, and it pained her to have to spend another night alone. As she unbuttoned her blouse, she stroked her hand along her cleavage.

"I would be happy to help you with that, if you'd like," Derrick said.

She jumped at his voice and stumbled into the closet door.

Derrick smiled. He wondered whether she was happy to see him or whether she'd forgive him for sneaking into her apartment. ...

Did you see that? All of a sudden, we're in Derrick's brain. How'd that happen?

While I've read lots of older books in which perspective hops from head to head in subsequent paragraphs, the approach is frowned upon these days — at least by many readers I know and talk with. One reason is because it's annoying. A reader likes to feel like she's in the character's mind, seeing everything from that perspective. Then, faster than you can say "Being John Malkovitch," you're in someone else's head!

Back to Godplayer. What I noticed in Cook's book is that not too many years ago, head-hopping was publishable. Today, not so much. You can still jump from perspective to perspective, but you need to show breaks — asterisks between paragraphs or empty space between paragraphs — to allow a reader to understand that things were changing.

Like I said, sometimes the tool can be effective. It can help show a scene in a camera-like manner. But if you do it too much, it's more annoying than the hand-cam view that's become popular in films since The Blair Witch Project.

Will head-hopping and flagrant dialogue tags ever come back into vogue? I doubt it. What do you think? And what other literary tools do you think have outlived their usefulness?

Platform vs. Credentials

This was originally posted in the nonfiction forum I moderate on AgentQuery Connect. I thought I'd share it here. Comments are always welcome.

While reading through agent blogs recently, I came upon a wonderful distinction that sums up quite well one of the challenges that frustrates writers of nonfiction: Platform vs. Credentials.

For example, say you're the president of a small company that produces widgets. You started in the field as unpaid internship in widget making, got a full-time job after graduating widget school, and worked your way up the ranks to be chief widget operator and finally president. You're a big wig in your little widget world. Congrats. You have credentials.

But do you have platform? Not necessarily.

You're running a small regional operation that until recently was struggling to make payroll, remains virtually unknown outside of the widget world, and makes decent widgets but is not recognized as an innovator. To make matters worse, you cancelled your subscription to Widget World Times ten years ago. I mean, who does that?

You don't have a great platform. As far as the widget world is concerned, you're a dinosaur. In fact, if it weren't for your son, you might be facing difficult decisions about the future of your little company.

Your son, who you hired a year ago after he earned his masters in widget management even though he followed at your heels since he was a kid, not only gets a subscription to Widget World Times, he's been quoted dozens of times in its competitor publications and has a column in the Widget Gazette. In addition, his blog, Widgetwatcher.com, is quickly becoming a must-read for the widget cognoscenti. Not only does he boast of his hundreds of blog followers, his frequent Twitter posts get retweeted regularly by the 4200+ followers he has there. And comments? Jeez, he pays your teenage son $10 a week (and supplies him with a six-pack of beer on occasion -- but you didn't hear that from me) to moderate the comments on Widgetwatcher.

Your son is developing a strong platform. If he can help you grow that company, then his platform becomes even stronger. Because he doesn't quite have the credentials yet. Maybe you and he could write a book together.

Does that help?

Stretching Out

As January closes, I look back on a blur of a month. Maybe it was all the snow and ice that distorted my vision, but I can't believe we've had a month of days already this year. On some of those days, I ran some miles and established a nice — albeit tenuous — foundation in my exercise plan for the year. In a similar fashion, I've been building up my freelance writing "miles." But before I get too far on my running or my writing, I need to pause and make sure I'm not about to injure myself.

To me, writing and running are a lot alike: Once you know how to do them, you can pick them back up without too much difficulty, but to get the most out of them you need to keep doing them consistently. That's how you stay in shape. When it comes to my legs, now that I've got a simple base down, I'll make sure that I stretch out my muscles, keep proper form. I'm concerned more about the long haul than reaching a random goal. In the same manner, I'm approaching my freelance — and my novel writing — by ensuring that I keep my tools (interviewing skills, grammar, language, voice) all sharp and ready for action.

Sometimes just a quick blog post is enough for me to feel I'm ready to bear down on finishing a profile or to get my mind thinking of questions to ask.

What do you do to keep your writing tools sharp?

New Year, New Challenges, New Inspirations

Not wanting to rehash the same old "resolution/goal" post, I found what I didn't know I was looking for in the blog of another aspiring author. The blog is Tikiman1962, which I only saw because I follow N.M. Kelby on Facebook. I don't know the guy who writes Tikiman. (Is he familiar with Martel's Tiki bar at the Jersey Shore? Or does "tiki" mean something else for this guy?) But I already feel a bit of kinship with him. He writes, he's done NaNoWriMo for several years, he's married and appreciates the help his wife can provide him in his writing. And he appears to speak with his own voice on his blog.

Good qualities all.

His 2010 wrap-up piece made me think about what I accomplished in the year that's already packed in a Hefty bag and lying on the curbside. I posted 30 items on The Elephant's Bookshelf in 2010 — more than some years, fewer than others. A couple were book reviews by writing friends. Some were very short pieces that I slapped together on the fly. What I really loved about the majority of them, however, is that they seemed to find an audience. I thank all of you who commented and hope I inspire you to do so in 2011.

To be sure, the largest contingent of commenters came from the community of writers I belong to at AgentQuery Connect, which I think is the most honest, critical, and supportive writers' site on the Web — at least those I'm familiar with. I also say thank you to Caroline Hagood, whose witty, wonderful blog Culture Sandwich has been a joyful discovery for me. Caroline shared a book review on the Bookshelf, and I wrote a blog post in the Sandwich. In between, we both seemed to enjoy what the other was writing. I call that a great example of how the Internet can expand your horizons and help you develop opportunities. Plus, creating friendships with other writers always strikes me as good karma.

If the opening days of 2011 are any indication, the new year is replete with such opportunities, too. So, whether you're looking forward or peeking in your rearview mirror, I wish good luck to my fellow writers as we all look to typing, scribbling, or scratching out word after word after word.